The Racial Hypocrisy of Juan Williams, Jeffrey Goldberg, and the Liberal Media

The Racial Hypocrisy of Juan Williams, Jeffrey Goldberg, and the Liberal Media

via Big Journalism by Joel B. Pollak on 1/31/12

Yesterday, Juan Williams of Fox News doubled down on his accusation that Republican presidential candidates are using "racial code words."
Today, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has followed suit with an article rehashing the tired allegation that Republicans are using so-called "dog whistle" tactics–"the use of coded, ambiguous language to appeal to the prejudices of certain subsets of voters"–i.e. white voters (Democrats' use of race to appeal to the prejudices and fears of black voters is rarely subject to scrutiny.)

Jeffrey Goldberg (Photo: Bloomberg News)

Goldberg says that the Obama's Republican opponents have alleged the following (original links, including one to Media Matters–itself the subject of serious charges of antisemitism–included):

Black people have lost the desire to perform a day's work. Black people rely on food stamps provided to them by white taxpayers. Black people, including Barack and Michelle Obama, believe that the U.S. owes them something because they are black. Black children should work as janitors in their high schools as a way to keep them from becoming pimps. And the pathologies afflicting black Americans are caused partly by the Democratic Party, which has created in them a dependency on government not dissimilar to the forced dependency of slaves on their owners.

I'll go even further, and admit that I personally heard a presidential candidate give a speech–in a church, no less–in which he blasted the black community, and black men in particular, for the phenomenon of single-parent households; who noted that black children with absent fathers have a greater chance of becoming criminals; who scolded black parents, "don't just sit in the house and watch 'Sports Center' all weekend long"; and who told blacks to "read a book once in awhile."
That candidate was Barack Obama.

There is a double standard here–one that goes beyond the obvious partisanship, or the reasonable allowances one might make for a member of a group to speak more boldly than an outsider might about its problems. Williams and Goldberg are not willing to examine their own prejudices here–namely, that "certain subsets of voters" are eager to express hatred towards blacks by supporting the candidate who best expresses it.
Moreover, the phenomenon of liberals scolding conservatives–and each other–for pointing out uncomfortable truths about cultural decay in the black community is an old one. It happened to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the sociologist and (later) liberal senator from New York who had the temerity to speculate about the plight of the black family. Moynihan was called a racist–and the decline of black families continued, regardless.
It might surprise Williams and Goldberg, but Republicans who advocate self-reliance among black Americans actually believe they are fighting racism. The essence of anti-black racism is the belief that blacks are inherently inferior. And in conservative eyes, many of the failed policies of the social welfare state accept black inferiority as given. Therefore, Republicans believe, to oppose these policies is actually to oppose racism.
Goldberg alleges: "This presidential election will be one of the most race-soaked in recent history." If so, that will not be due to the Republican candidates, but to the media, which has poured racial gasoline on the political tinder, the better to protect their favored president from scrutiny.
Just this morning, on MSNBC, Jonathan Martin of Politico described the Florida panhandle, where Republicans vote in today's primary, as "cracker counties."
To media liberals, that's not racism; that's just telling it like it is.